The football community had barely recovered from the passing of Mario Zagallo and another piece of mournful news teared up fans on Monday evening as it came to light that one of football’s greatest players Franz Beckenbauer had breathed his last at 78 the day before.
It’s no ordinary coincidence that both legends – belonging to the trinity of players who have won a World Cup both as a player and as a manager, with Didier Deschamps completing the trinity in 2018 — have passed away within days of each other.
Beckenbauer was a stylish defender in his playing days. He was a smooth operator. His tackles were not ugly. In the blink of an eye, he would dispossess the opponent of the ball. No one would have an inkling in the lead-up to that. He led West Germany to the World Cup triumph in 1974. Two years before, he had captained them to glory in the European Championship.
For a huge part of his club career, he played for his hometown team Bayern Munich, and led them to the European Cup triumph for three successive years in 1974, 1975 and 1976. During his stay at Bayern from 1964 to 1977, the Reds won four Bundesliga titles that included a three-peat (in 1971-72, 1972-73 and 1973-74). He had two stints with New York Cosmos in the United States, He also had a stint at Hamburg with whom he won a Bundesliga title. In 1984, he retired from playing.
Beckenbauer was born at a turbulent time in Germany’s history – on September 11, 1945. The Second World War, forced on the world by Germany, had just ended with the Allied Forces emerging victorious against Hitler and his supporters. So Beckenbauer grew up in a region that had fallen out of favour with the rest of the world. He was a little kid when Germany was divided into West Germany and East Germany. Tough conditions create tough men and Beckenbauer was one of them. Resilience was the theme all through his life.
He was the manager of the West German side that lost to Argentina in the 1986 World Cup final. Yes, Diego Maradona was unstoppable! Beckenbauer was heartbroken but instead of wallowing in self-pity, he pulled himself together and succeeded in avenging himself on the South American side four years later as West Germany beat Argentina in the final to lift their third World Cup trophy. At the time he was only the second after Zagallo to have won a World Cup both as a player and a manager. Deschamps, who won the World Cup in 1998 as a player, joined the elite company of Beckenbauer and Zagallo in 2018 when he managed the French team to their second World Cup trophy.
Beckenbauer later managed French side Marseille and Bayern, and with the latter, he won the Bundesliga and UEFA Cup. Thereafter, he moved into administration and served Bayern as president and German Football Association as vice president.
However, his life in administration was not all hunky-dory. He was the president of Germany’s 2006 World Cup local organising committee and it was alleged that it bought votes so that the country could host the world’s biggest sporting extravaganza. Beckenbauer admitted to mistakes but vehemently denied that votes had been bought. The trial ended without a verdict in 2020 after it became time-barred.
Brazilian legend Pele, who died in late 2022, was a great admirer of his New York Cosmos team-mate Beckenbauer and probably the only player from his generation whose popularity exceeded that of Beckenbauer. “He’s a great mate. As a player, he was marked out by intelligence rather than strength. He was more Brazilian than German as a footballer,” Pele once said of Beckenbauer.
Nicknamed Der Kaiser (the Emperor in English), Beckenbauer was the bossman, by all accounts. But he didn’t have to act loud to get things done. He had a kind of personality that took care of most things for him. With his death, a massive era in football has come to an end. Former England forward Kevin Keegan, who played alongside Beckenbauer at Hamberg, once said the following of the German great. “He’s a gentleman, a perfect Englishman. Unfortunately, he’s not English.” That should sum up how Beckenbauer carried himself on and off the field.